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Adalah-NY: The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel (adalahny.org)

CodePink: Women for Peace (www.codepink4peace.org)

Jewish Voice for Peace (www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org)

The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (www.endtheoccupation.org)

DATE: January 3, 2011

Dear Combined Systems Inc.,

As US groups committed to justice and peace, we are writing to ask that Combined Systems Inc. cease providing CSI equipment to the Israeli government in response to the Israeli military’s ongoing and foreseeable misuse of CSI crowd control equipment to kill and maim protesters in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Israeli military has demonstrated a pattern of misuse of your equipment, directly leading to the death and injury of unarmed demonstrators in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Over the last two years alone, the Israeli military has used your products to kill two peaceful protesters from one family in the West Bank village of Bil’in, to severely injure two peaceful protesters from the US, and to seriously injure many more. According to the the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, two other Palestinians were killed by Israeli tear gas in 2002.[1]

Event

Where: 331 Madison Avenue (at 43rd St) in Manhattan, Office of Point Lookout Capital, a company that helps provide tear gas to Israel

What: Street theater and vigil

On January 1, 2011, a 36-year-old Palestinian woman, Jawaher Abu Rahmah from the West Bank village of Bil’in, died in a hospital from the effects of tear gas inhalation suffered at a protest the previous day against Israel’s construction of a wall and settlements on Bil’in’s land.

Jawaher’s brother Bassem Abu Rahmah was killed in April 2009 when he was hit in the chest with an extended range CSI tear gas canister fired directly at him by an Israeli soldier during a peaceful protest in Bil'in.

Much of Israel’s tear gas is provided by the US company Combined Systems Inc. (CSI). The Israeli military is using CSI’s tear gas as a weapon in its effort to crush the growing movement of unarmed protest against Israel’s illegal confiscation of Palestinian land for Israeli settlements. Even more disturbing, you as a US taxpayer are paying for at least some of the tear gas that Israel is shooting at Palestinian, Israeli and international protesters. For more information please see Adalah-NY’s ACTION ALERT: Tell CSI to Stop Sending Tear Gas to Israel.

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Adalah-NY: The Campaign for the Boycott of Israel is disturbed by recent raids and subpoenas of activists from Palestine solidarity, and anti-war groups in the Midwest. We strongly support the right of those activists and of all international solidarity and anti-war activists to express their opinions through organized protest and speech protected by the 1st Amendment. We are extremely concerned that recent FBI actions and the use of federal grand jury subpoenas are being used in conjunction with new definitions of "material support" for "foreign terrorist organizations" to criminalize and harrass legitimate dissent and advocacy.

Press Release

Washington, D.C. – Representatives from four US human rights groups met with State Department officials on Friday, October 22nd, and delivered a letter addressed to Secretary of State Clinton signed by more than 5,000 individuals calling for the US government to demand that Israel free Abdallah Abu Rahmah, a leading Palestinian nonviolent protest organizer. Abu Rahmah, from the West Bank village of Bil’in, was sentenced on October 11th in Israeli military court to one year in prison for his part in organizing Bil’in’s five-year campaign of civil disobedience to Israel’s construction of a fence and settlements on village land in violation of international law. Abu Rahmah’s conviction has been denounced by the UK Foreign Office, the EU, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, B’Tselem and South African anti-apartheid leader Desmond Tutu.

Rob Mosrie, Executive Director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation said, “Israel’s arrest of non-violent activists like Abdallah Abu Rahmah mocks President Obama’s call in his Cairo speech for Palestinians to use only nonviolent means to gain their freedom. What kind of message does it send to a community when their nonviolent leadership is jailed?”

The letter delivered to the State Department and addressed to Hillary Clinton was signed by 35 organizations and 5,270 individuals and written before Abdallah Abu Rahmah’s October 11th sentencing. The letter noted that in July 2010 in Krakow at a meeting of the intergovernmental group Community of Democracies, Secretary of State Clinton saluted “civil society activists around the world who have recently been harassed, censored, cut off from funding, arrested, prosecuted, even killed,” and called for coordinated international efforts to defend them. The letter to Clinton continued, “Abdallah Abu Rahmah is one of these activists who, in pursuit of human rights, has been unjustly imprisoned.”

Please join Adalah-NY as we echo the call below from our colleagues at Jewish Voice for Peace for freedom for Abdallah Abu Rahmah. Adalah-NY has supported Abdallah and Bil'in's five year campaign to save their land from Israel's wall and settlements, by organizing an international boycott of the companies of Lev Leviev due to their involvement in the construction of settlements on Bil'in's land.

Seized in the night. Held without trial, then tried in a military court where you have no rights; convicted on the coerced confessions of minors, you are facing a sentence of years in prison. All for organizing peaceful protests against the theft of your land and asserting your democratic rights.

Most of us who believe in human rights and democracy can never imagine being treated in such a way. Yet that is exactly what befell Abdallah Abu Rahmah, a human rights advocate from Bil'in in the Occupied West Bank. His town is known around the world for the determination of its residents - joined by Israelis and internationals in solidarity - to protest weekly against the theft of their land by Israeli authorities.

In Abdallah's case, the charges were as bogus as the consequences were grave. He had collected spent tear gas canisters (see picture) to represent the harshness of the Israeli soldiers' continuing violent response to unarmed demonstrators, and which had caused the death of Bassem Abu Rahme, Mr. Abu Rahmah's cousin.

Israel charged that Abdallah intended to use the no longer viable canisters as weapons. They arrested him, charging him as a security risk! This illustrates that the Israeli Defense Forces are far more afraid of unarmed protest than of armed resistance, and showing that they view Palestinians asserting their democratic rights as a crime. He was convicted on the ridiculous charges of "organizing illegal marches" and "incitement" after a unfair trial, and is now facing years in prison.

We who draw inspiration from his actions cannot let this happen. Now is the time to raise our voices and ensure Abdallah Abu Rahmah is free to organize and advocate for the rights of his community. We stand with Abdallah.

January 19, 2010, New York, NY - Israel must end a wave of arrests of Palestinian civil society members who are organizing protests and boycotts opposing Israeli rights violations, Adalah-NY, CodePink: Women for Peace, Jewish Voice for Peace and the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation said today. While prominent protest and boycott organizers from the Palestinian organization Stop the WallJamal Juma’ and Mohammad Othman were released last week after nearly one and four months of detention respectively, nightly arrests continue in the West Bank, with eight more arrests on January 18th in the village of Ni’lin.

Press Release

New York, NY – On a snowy Saturday afternoon, forty-five human rights carolers serenaded Madison Avenue shoppers with familiar holiday tunes outside the storefront of Israeli diamond and settlement mogul Lev Leviev, but their lyrics called for the boycott of Leviev’s companies. The New York protest took place against the backdrop of a growing arrest campaign by the Israeli military against Palestinian protest and boycott activists from West Bank villages where Leviev has built settlements.

Thursday at 2 AM, the Israeli military surrounded the Ramallah home of Abdallah Abu Rahmah, a high school teacher and the Coordinator of Bil’in’s Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements, and arrested him. Abu Rahmah is among the leaders of the West Bank village of Bil’in’s nearly five-year nonviolent struggle of protests, lawsuits and boycotts aiming to save the village’s land from Israel’s wall and expanding settlements. Abdallah Abu Rahmah joins Mohammed Othman from the village of Jayyous, Adeeb Abu Rahmah from Bil’in and many other Palestinians who are currently jailed by Israel for working for justice.

At the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, which came hours after Abu Rahmah’s arrest, President Obama said, "there are the men and women around the world who have been jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice... the unrecognized millions whose quiet acts of courage and compassion inspire even the most hardened of cynics. I cannot argue with those who find these men and women – some known, some obscure to all but those they help – to be far more deserving of this honor than I."

Abdallah Abu Rahmah is one of those people. In President Obama’s June speech in Cairo, he called on Palestinians to resist nonviolently, though Bil’in’s long and creative struggle has inspired tens of thousands of Palestinians, Israelis and people worldwide.